Lebanon reborn? PDF Download

Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on International Relations
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Author:
Publisher: DIANE Publishing
ISBN: 1422333175
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 69

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Author: Ghenwa Hayek
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857725327
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Beirut is the cultural, commercial and economic hub of Lebanon. But to what extent has the city affected and shaped the formation and perceptions of Lebanese national identity? Ghenwa Hayek here explores how anxieties over the past, present and future of Beirut have been articulated through a sense of dislocation present in Lebanese writing since the 1960s. Drawing on theories of cultural studies, geography and history, the author uses an interdisciplinary framework to explore the role that spaces - from rural to urban - have played and continue to play in the defining, and re-defining, of national identity in the seventy years since the creation of the Lebanese nation state. This theoretical perspective coupled with a close reading of little-explored contemporary writings lead Hayek to question the predominant assumption that Lebanese novelists only became engaged in discourses about place identity and individual and social belonging with the start of the fifteen-year civil war and the destruction of Beirut's city centre. Instead, the book shows that particular geographical imaginaries have been mobilized to describe, question and debate Lebanese identity since the 1960s and that some go back even further into the late nineteenth century. This re-reading calls for a re-evaluation of some of the most predominant assumptions about Lebanon and the processes of Lebanese identity formation across the country's modern history. Examining a wide range of modern and contemporary literature, Hayek charts the rise to cultural prominence of the city of Beirut as a significant player in shaping perceptions of Lebanese culture and identity.

Author: Angus Gavin
Publisher: Academy Press
ISBN: 9781854904812
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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The renewal of Beirut's city center is currently the world's most challenging urban regeneration project. Led by the private sector, its institutional framework is pioneering. The planning and implementation embrace many issues: infrastructure renewal, urban archeology, new development and the restoration of historic fabric, the creation of a social arena where the city can reconnect, and the relaunching of the Lebanese capital, once pre-eminent in the Middle East, into a stabilizing world of emerging opportunities.

Author: Samir Khalaf
Publisher: Saqi
ISBN: 0863565905
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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The Bourj in central Beirut is one of the world's oldest and most vibrant public squares. Named after the mediaeval lookout tower that once soared above the city's imposing ramparts, the square has also been known as Place des Canons (after a Russian artillery build-up in 1773) and Martyrs' Square (after the Ottoman execution of nationalists in 1916). As an open museum of civilizations, it resonates with influences from ancient Phoenician to colonial, post-colonial and, as of late, postmodern elements. Over the centuries it has come to embody pluralism and tolerance. During the Lebanese civil war (1975-90), this ebullient entertainment district, transport hub and melting-pot of cultures was ruptured by the notorious Green Line, which split the city into belligerent warring factions. Fractious infighting and punishing Israeli air raids compounded the damage, turning the Bourj into a no-man's-land. In the wake of former Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri's assassination (14 February 2005), the Bourj witnessed extraordinary scenes of popular, multi-faith and cross-generational protest. Once again, Samir Khalaf argues, the heart of Beirut was poised to re-invent itself as an open space in which diverse groups can celebrate their differences without indifference to the other. By revisiting earlier episodes in the Bourj's numerous transformations of its collective identity, Khalaf explores prospects for neutralizing the disheartening symptoms of reawakened religiosity and commodified consumerism. 'A timely and informative study on Beirut's pre-eminent patch of public space.' The Daily Star 'Khalaf has arguably contributed more fine studies on the history and sociology of modern Lebanon than has any other scholar alive.' Foreign Affairs 'A spirited guide to Beirut's (re)development, lively in style, rich in illustration and perceptive in analysis.' Frederick Anscombe, Birkbeck College, University of London

Author: Syrine Hout
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748643435
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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This book examines the phenomenon of the post-civil war Anglophone Lebanese fictional narrative. The texts chosen for study have been produced in, and are substantially about, life in exile. They therefore deal not only with the brutal civil strife in Lebanon (1975-1990) but with one of its crucial and long-standing by-products: expatriation. Syrine Hout shows how these texts characterise a distinctly new literary and cultural trend and have founded an Anglophone Lebanese diasporic literature.The authors discussed in the book are Rabih Alameddine, Tony Hanania, Rawi Hage, Nada Awar Jarra, Patricia Sarrafian Ward and Nathalie Ab-Ezzi. In her exploration of their writings Hout teases out the different meanings and reformulations of home, be it Lebanon as a nation, a house, a host country, an irretrievable pre-war childhood, a state of in-between dwelling, a portable state of mind, and/or a utopian ideal.

Author: Lina Khatib
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857714287
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Modern Lebanese cinema can best be explored in the context of the Civil War, in part because almost all the Lebanese films made since its outset in 1975 have been about this war. Lina Khatib takes 1975 Beirut as her starting point, and takes us right through to today for this, the first major book on Lebanese cinema and its links with politics and national identity.She examines how Lebanon is imagined in such films as Jocelyn Saab's "Once Upon a Time, Beirut", Ghassan Salhab's "Terra Incognita", and Ziad Doueiri's "West Beirut". In so doing, she re-examines the importance of cinema to the national imagination. Also, and using interviews with the current generation of Lebanese filmmakers, she uncovers how in the Lebanese context cinema can both construct and communicate a national identity and thereby opens up new perspectives on the socio-political role of cinema in the Arab world.

Author: Judith Naeff
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319659332
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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This book investigates a shared experience of time and space in the post-civil-war city of Beirut: “the suspended now”. Based on the close analysis of a large corpus of cultural objects; including visual art, literature, architecture and cinema; the book argues that last decades have witnessed a gradual shift in understanding this temporality from being a transitional phase to a more durable experience of precariousness. The theoretically rich analyses take us on a journey through Beirut’s real and imagined geographies, from garbage dumps to real estate advertisements, and from subterranean spaces to martyr’s posters. For scholars of cultural analysis, urban studies, cultural geography and critical theory, the case of post-1990 Beirut offers a fascinating case of neoliberal urban renewal, which challenges existing theories. For scholars of Lebanon and Beirut, this study complements existing work on post-civil-war Lebanese cultural production rooted in trauma studies by its focus on the city’s continual exposure to violence.

Author: Sandy Isenstadt
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800305
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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This provocative collection of essays is the first book-length treatment of the development of modern architecture in the Middle East. Ranging from Jerusalem at the turn of the twentieth century to Libya under Italian colonial rule, postwar Turkey, and on to present-day Iraq, the essays cohere around the historical encounter between the politics of nation-building and architectural modernism's new materials, methods, and motives. Architecture, as physical infrastructure and as symbolic expression, provides an exceptional window onto the powerful forces that shaped the modern Middle East and that continue to dominate it today. Experts in this volume demonstrate the political dimensions of both creating the built environment and, subsequently, inhabiting it. In revealing the tensions between achieving both international relevance and regional meaning, Modernism in the Middle East affords a dynamic view of the ongoing confrontations of deep traditions with rapid modernization. Political and cultural historians, as well as architects and urban planners, will find fresh material here on a range of diverse practices.

Author: Hannes Baumann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190862629
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Rafiq Hariri was Lebanon's Silvio Berlusconi: a 'self-made' billionaire who became prime minister and shaped postwar reconstruction. His assassination in February 2005 almost tipped the country into civil strife. Yet Hariri was neither a militia leader nor from a traditional political family. How did this outsider rise to wield such immense political and economic power? Citizen Hariri shows how the billionaire converted his wealth and close ties to the Saudi monarchy into political power. Hariri is used as a prism to examine how changes in global neoliberalism reshaped Lebanese politics. He initiated urban megaprojects and inflated the banking sector. And having grown rich as a contractor in the Gulf, he turned Lebanon into an outlet for Gulf capital. The concentration of wealth and the restructuring of the postwar Lebanese state were comparable to the effects of neoliberalism elsewhere. But at the same time, Hariri was a deeply Lebanese figure. He had to fend against militia leaders and a hostile Syrian regime. The billionaire outsider eventually came to behave like a traditional Lebanese political patron. Hannes Baumann assesses not only the personal legacy of the man dubbed 'Mr Lebanon' but charts the wider social and economic transformations his rise represented.